the following is a list of things many chinese/taiwanese hold sacred and assume to be true, and therefore fall under the wrath of my righteous keyboard:
1. the chinese are one people- let's see, the miao, hui, manchu,tujia, yi,mongol,buyei, dong,yao, oh yeah and han, the largest (claimed) ethnic group.there are probably over 100 different groups.how many chinese people are actually Han is up for debate.
2. the name "zhong guoh" means "middle kingdom" - wrong! it means a conglomeration of all the peoples living in that land. it was not meant to denote that the ancient chinese thought of themselves as being the center of the earth (a favorite myth of chinese nationalist/ sino-centrists to further instill feelings of racial superiority in chinese people).
3. chinese culture is one, unbroken, enlightened culture- chinese culture is fragmented by many dynasties, two of which were foriegn (mongols and manchu). some of the dynasties would be considered very englightened, while others were backwards and cruel. and that line is not drawn between foriegn and "han" dynasties. there were a large number of extremely stupid "han" rulers.
4. chinese writing is one continuous line of evolution to what it is now- false. there were other lineages of writing systems,but they died out, and we have (fortunately) the one we do now.
5. the chinese were more enlightened than the westerners- until 500 years ago. then they fell behind. and that falling behind has EVERYTHING to do with their own backwardness. time to put the blame where it belongs.and many things still practiced in chinese culture are cruel by modern standards. if these cruel practices are any hint, it is doubtful that the chinese were ever all that enlightened.
6. to be Chinese means to be Tao or Buddhist- buddhism came to china about 2000 years ago. tao was invented about 2500 years ago. if you want to claim chinese culture as being 5000 years old, stop condemning 3000 years of people before Tao and Buddha to being "not chinese", by your definition.
there are (since the 600AD for Christianity), chinese christians,chinese muslisms, and chinese jews with a long history/lineage. there are also "crypto" groups who hid their religion under the guise of buddhism/taoism. it is believed a large part of gwan ying/pusa iconology is really the Virgin Mary.
7.chinese culture developed on its own- another nationalistic wet dream. Bu Dai Xi,the famous taiwan puppets,actually orignated in Turkey. the oldest mummies in china were in fact Causcasian, and had in their possession accupuncture needles, long before the birth of Hua Tou , the supposed inventor of chinese medicine. the romans and greeks knew where china was. the silk road ran (and still does) to the West for thousands of years.
8.the chinese invented gunpowder and paper and that proves that they are a superior race- any group of people as large as the chinese is bound to have some geniuses. that doesn't mean the whole race is smart, just as some white guys sending a man to the moon doesn't make Caucasians superior. their culture,maybe. but not race.
so where does this leave you, if you are a chinese/taiwanese? be proud of your culture, but forget the rants of the chinese nationalists on both sides of the taiwan strait and amongst the chinese disporia who want to lead you astray. keep the useful things from chinese culture, and discard the rest. live a western life. you'll be happier.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
As a Taiwanese who is tired of these stupid assumptions/thoughts, I'm quite surprised at the depth of your understanding about Taiwan.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work.
thanks! and thanks for coming by.
ReplyDeletei find the REAL chinese culture to be FAR more interesting than the ultra perfect false one concocted by sino culturalists. it has so many facets: islamic traders from the silk road, a myriad of sub cultures and dialects, and the common knowledge by both the chinese rulers and their western counterparts that each other existed. i LOVE it!
Hm, when I hear that they invented gunpowder, ceramics, ... I always ask THATS ALL???
ReplyDeleteLook at all that stuff that Europeans/Americans had discovered in the past 100 years alone...
and they might have discovered gunpowder but not the "firestick". :P That was fatal.
ReplyDeletethanks for coming by. i always say, its not who got there first, but who did the most with it.
ReplyDeleteWell put, I been had the same observation and more. I lived in Taiwan in an time when you could not speak like this and not get kicked out of Taiwan or possibly killed. That was back in the 1970's when Taiwan was in some ways more mentally disturbed than it is now. That said, Taiwan's so called modernism has manifested new forms of mental illness that are even worse than before when Taiwan totally locked of from modern civilization. You mentioned only 8 points but I could easily add dozens more if not into the hundreds of KMT induced brainwashing. The mental illness and false sense of racial superiority in Taiwan is complex. Being and Island that was influnenced by the most racist and perverted enclave in the "modern" world that being the Japanese and of course Sun Yat Sen, the great neo nazi college drop out that come back to China with half baked neo nazi ideas and soon found that he could blame all the backwardness of China on White folks. Two wealthy song sisters married two warriors CCK and Mao. Mao suck technology out of the USSR and CCK sucked it out of America while Chenault protected them from the Japs. With this historical backround. Taiwan was able to use the Jessie Jackson style Box Rebellion one sided revisionism to justify screwing "wai gwooooooooooo ren". Now that they are economically affluent on the backs of the American work force exporting copied shoddy products with sleazy business deals they feel very civilized and part of the world community. They know they are civilized because they can buy everything they see from the Duty Free Shop and still have time to slurp their noodles and watery out of a bowl with the same enthusiasm as a hungry canine all the while insulting the gwai lo. or condescending term of alleged affection the "lao wai" I guess these people are obsessed with race foreigners and wai gwooooo rens" and their 5000 years of ineptitudes. I often point out to them that IQ is a ration of performance over time of. Besides counting gold coins, or eating betel nuts, or playing rounds of majung I have yet count 5000 inventions of the Chinese over 5000 years compared to the millions of inventions counting only from the days of Ben Franklin to the present. The purpose here was not to compete with the Taiwanese is but just to put their racial/nationalist obsessive compulsive bullshit in proper perspective. In closing they talk and impressive game till you actually stand back and see it for what it really is.
ReplyDeletethanks for coming by.
ReplyDeleteVERY WELL put. the sheer number of inventions since the dawn of the west, compared to the ones made under the so called chinese superiority era should make one stop and think about how bankrupt chinese culture is, not to mention the fact that they think slurping noodles is ok, yet foriegners are supposedly " barbaric".